2016 Saltire Society Literary Awards Winners

November 25, 2016

Literary Edinburgh gathered in Central Hall last night on the 24 of November to celebrate the shortlist of talented Scottish writers selected for this year’s Saltire Literary Awards, and to discover who the winners of each category were. The winner of each individual book award wins a £2,000 cash prize and goes forward to be considered for the Saltire Book of the Year award with an accompanying cash prize of £6,000.

Edinburgh writer Chitra Ramaswamy shared a win with Isabel Buchanan for the First Book of the Year Award for her non-fiction book Expecting. John Kay, born and educated in Edinburgh, won the Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award with Other People’s Money: The Real Business of Finance. The Poetry Book of the Year Award went to Kathleen Jamie for her collection of poems The Bonniest Companie, which also went on to win the coveted Scottish Book of the Year Award.

On winning the award Kathleen said:

“I’m delighted that The Bonniest Companie has been named ‘Scottish Poetry Book of the Year’, but also a bit embarrassed. It was a terrifically strong shortlist, any of us could have won. Scotland makes very good poets – a fact that’s still not acknowledged as it ought to be. I’m grateful to the judges. It couldn’t have been an easy decision.”

Four of the five shortlisted publishers selected for this year’s Saltire Publisher of the Year Award were Edinburgh houses, symbolic of the fantastic work the city has been carrying out in the publishing industry. The award went to the independent, Edinburgh based publishing company, Floris Books, who will be given the opportunity to attend the renowned Yale University Publishing course, fully funded as parts of the Saltire’s 80th anniversary celebrations. Floris Books’ own Leah McDowell (Design and Production Manager) then received the new Saltire Emerging Publisher of the Year Award.

Full Shortlist

Scottish Fiction Book of the Year:

Dirt Road (Canongate Books) by James Kelman
The Blade Artist (Vintage) by Irvine Welsh
The Sunlight Pilgrims (William Heinemann) by Jenni Fagan
The Brilliant & Forever (Birlinn) by Kevin MacNeil
His Bloody Project (Saraband) by Graeme Macrae Burnet’s
This Must be the Place (Tinder Press) by Maggie O’Farrell

Scottish Non-fiction Book of the Year

The Outrun (Canongate Books) by Amy Liptrot
Fallen Glory (Old Street Publishing) by James Crawford
A Little History of Religion (Yale University Press) by Richard Holloway
Other People’s Money (Profile Books) by John Kay
Glasgow: Mapping the City (Birlinn) by John Moore

Scottish Research Book of the Year

The Vikings in Islay: The Place of Names in Hebridean Settlement History (John Donald) by Alan Macniven
James Hogg and British Romanticism: A Kaleidoscopic Art (Palgrave Macmillan) by Meiko O’Halloran
Scottish Arctic Whaling (John Donald) by Chesley W. Sanger
The Wild Black Region: Badenoch 1750-1850 (John Donald) by David Taylor
The Literary Culture of Early Modern Scotland: Manuscript Production and Transmission, 1560-1625 (Oxford University Press) by Sebastian Verweij

Scottish History Book of the Year

Castles in the Mist (Saraband) by Robin Noble
Sherland and the Great War (The Shetland Times Ltd.) by Linda K Riddell
Oil Strike North Sea (Luath Press) by Mike Shepherd
St Kilda: The Last and Outmost Isle (Historic Environment Scotland) by Angela Gannon and George Geddes
Set Adrift Upon the World (Berlin) by James Hunter
A Tale of Three Cities: The Life and Times of Lord Daer, 1763-1794 (Birlinn Ltd (John Donald)) by Bob Harris (Editor)

The Saltire Literary Awards are organised by the Saltire Society, an independent charity founded in 1936 with membership branches throughout Scotland. The Awards are heralded as Scotland’s foremost literary awards, with previous winners including Michel Faber, Alasdair Gray, Liz Lochhead and AL Kennedy.